poem: Vishnu alleys

pillow road in
Noggle town,
investitures on the move,
dreamsicle highways:
the ventured gain ain't
nuthin' in this five &
dime world, domains
of tamale specials
crowning the murky achievements
in Buddhaland: I cashed in
all my chips, my mood was
fully vagrant,
cowsill'd beyond belief,
aching for inventory,
the higher selves out
on the town,
seraphim & cherubim all
in they polyester
chariots of fire
for the moogie present:
cash it in here, dear, sez
Principal Lee, the biggest
damn angel on the block,
gainsaying the bandbeaters,
elevating the discourse beyond
reptilian, & if you want
lipstick traces, i suggest
you check your noodly
pomposity at the door:
red overalls lit the night,
golden boar radiant
in his clamoring for
eternal crowding: say
your prayers, brother,
simulate grace
if you ain't got the fullness
bulging,
same as you I ain't no
cellophane doom, i crash
the parties, i veer left of
left, slipping down the Vishnu
alleys, on down
the polytheistic
polyester,
damned in the ethereal
lyric opera,
tangerine libretto
dream.

poem: the down and simple

fashion me your shining blade:
kiss-off, kiss and tell,
kismet down
your shining alleys,
integers of the eternal
bloom, faces
of the tumbling mannequins,
pleasure in the fields,
gathering the custom wires,
the nethering gates,
the jasmine confederacies,
the down and simple
fragrance that grabs you
by the neck, whispers
now,
excites pandemonium
in even the bleakest times:
ask at the quarry,
steal the watchman's attention,
gamble with the takings:
i confess the idea not mine,
in the farthest seams the scarves
are with me, shining
the foolish sensibilities,
the sideways costume changes,
the withering glances,
confined in your seeming
the lord god's bellows
desires that cave the senses,
shadows that know the certainty
of your every move.
bless us, quiet Mara,
still the quandaries,
exact in due time,
never leave me to
the facts that cherish
you home.

poem: pious bennie to the rescue, part ii

Rosy Bennie, fresh
from his condom makeover,
teetotaling megawatts
to the minions, wants
his noncoital bubbas
to save their precoital
ewelings and lamblings
from the nightmare of
"invalid marriages":
industrial strength walkers,
I guess, for them
dawdling bedriddens,
wheelchair causality smiting
the oftly doomed. "Marriage is not
an absolute right," my sweet little bubbas, &
lest we moon ourselves into
bedlam oblivion,
let us remember that
"the right to a church wedding
requires that the bride
and groom intend
to celebrate." Foolish me,
in all my funereal nuptials,
Hamlet-black in dour
regalia, I thought it was all
for the little warm death.
Balloons? Popcorn balls?
Limbo'd kazoo contests?
Celebration enough for you
& your compassionate
latex'd
boys in the street?

poem: quaint missionaries

(The first lines were straight from the Google ad popping up on my YouTube video: yes, it stopped at car . . . )

Become a personal trainer
Get ISSA certified,
turn your passion into your
Car, a velvet backseat
kind of passion
foggy windows
Condensation wracks
the van gogh in your fingers
flesh for a sainted
bloom that wiles
your wily fishy soul. I trained
in the withering light,
cold air biting
the night's dreams you
were there & there was
an afterlife of missing persons.
I trained for this
in the past lives
of gravel roads, lucindas
gaining ground as you
sow what reaps blessings
from the drunken boats:
sift your mercies
for the turtle bays,
a dying grace fells
the womb in you,
tinsel-gathering
through all the seasons of you
down the quiet streets
down the carnivaled alleys
down the avenue of trees
was the first in them all,
was personal training the vast
crowds at your disposal
was fashioning bliss
the least bit on
your yeasty mind?
I grant you
the quaint missionaries
in their murmuring
toss-offs:
theirs are missiles
firing through the mist,
& I, well,
I,
I, can no farther
round than
this smattering of
this.

poem: [Fell off Dante, the ground was harder than I thought]

[Poem inspired by a line from the Nebula Girl and a rough fall . . . ]

Fell off Dante, the ground was harder than I thought,
Dismal maritimes in these dying days
Italian cadences rhyming
the ridges In my head,
circling fires
The exquisite surprise of
fire and ice
ridicule of the western slopes
hiding the ancient ways
we seem so far gone
when the half-sized minds
echo the final dialing down,
final dialtones you
miss in your frenzy to equestriate
your life to the barely living,
rounding chasms best left unsaid
she was a quandary, an abyss,
pas de deux of commiserating dragons
in the nestled eye
sliding down a river of doom
the wastrel gods
in search of food and home
their last mermaid selves
so much more than what
they bargained for
the miserable little experiments
tinkering in the woodshop
I carved an eden,
sez the one,
& the plenties answer
In banal chorus to the hallelujah babies
Crying terror crying
Misguided simplicity
Crying the endless dimes
Excuses middened
In gorgeous green Mystery,
tax tables
of the hobbled saints.

ix. The Rounding Place

I woke this time to the sound of the sea. Opening my eyes, I expected to see the girl, the last remaining child, the boy having disappeared where all the others had gone. Instead, I found myself once again in the blue tent. All the wounds from the boils were gone, all save three lined up down the center of my chest.

Voices murmured outside the tent. I rose to meet them. Tossing back the flap, I stepped outside. Grey sky greying to black; grey sea in dreary reflection. On the beach sat Fas, Ra, and the woman in blue. With an uncharacteristically bold and wry smile on his face, Fas lifted a black patch from his left eye and tossed it into the fire in front of them. With a courtesy I thought beyond him, Ra bid me sit on a yellow blanket beside the woman. I still had no name for her, nor did I expect to ever get one.

She gazed out into the grey greying black. Such a beautiful and yet impassive face I had never seen.

I played the next card in my fool's deck.

"So then all this was just a dream?"

She spoke into the grey, not looking at me.

"You dismiss dreams with that just, brother. They are not puppet shows put on for your pleasure. Or your terror. But no, not a dream at all."

"But, the girl, the other children -"

Before she spoke - was it a trick of the eye? - the young girl's face flashed across hers.

"Girl? There was no girl."

"Then you."

"Nor I."

"Neither girl nor you, and yet not a dream either."

She turned her goddess eyes on me; with her gaze, I felt a sadness well up from depths I felt completely beyond me. It was as if the sky itself poured its greying blackness within me. I felt wracked by a despair that threatened to pull me under.

"Is that a dream then, too, my brother?"

Ra spoke, whispering in a tone of beseeching: "Sister -"

"He can handle this." Her eyes still upon me, she continued: "Brother, you have lived your life in one tiny crease of what we know as the world, a crease we would call the hell your sainted men go on and on about, with no sense at all that they are standing in its very midst. Golden eggs offered to all those slaves who will most pander to their lickspittle visions. Visions? Bedtime stories for infants. You have lived your childhood to its fullest, brother. Childish boy at play on the playa, but your body cried out for more. We heard you. We know the other creases."

I felt a rage - my father's, in truth - rising within me. Fas must have felt it, too, as he rose to meet me.

"No need, Fas," said the woman. "He can meet it."

I feared the coming explosion, but I also felt a hatred for the woman and her infernal certainties.

As I reached to strangle her, the girl's face flashed repeatedly cross hers, and the two of them spoke in unison: "Three labors remain -"

Instantly, the grey scene melted away and I found myself back in the pine forest, strapped within my traveling encasement, under a dying sky. Alone, but for the sound of jackals in the nearing distance. The left side of my body was once again paralyzed.

I prayed the sound of the jackals was in my head alone. As the moon rose, I found my prayer had not been answered. Not by a long shot. Illuminated behind a lone jackal were three bodies hanging in the limbs of another tree: Fas, Ra, and the woman.

Despite my paralysis, despite the fear of the jackal roiling within me, I had but one thought: I must cut them down.

With the thought, a blade appeared in my right hand: my father's knife. I cut the bonds of my encasement and rolled out onto the ground. All I could do was drag myself slowly towards the tree. As I neared it, the growl from the jackal's belly was the sound of hell.

But a crease, my brother. The woman's words resounded within my head.

The jackal is assuredly no crease, my sister.

I see that, even in your misery, your arrogance still travels with you.

The jackal - the crease - leapt. It's vice-like jaws upon my left arm were as nothing, what with my paralysis. I reached to stab it with all the vicious rage I could summon. As the blade pierced its flesh, I found that I was holding a young boy, me, at the age of nine, me, now, by my own blade, dead. The blood that rained this time transported me nowhere. I simply lay, howling with despair, in the flood that ran upon me. I sat up and held the boy tight against my chest.

With both arms.

All strength returned.

Bathed in the boy's blood, I stood and approached the tree. No transformation of the corpses this time: all three bodies still hanging from the limbs. For the next two hours, I labored to bring them down, carrying them with a strength I had never felt in my body before. Given the creases, I kept awaiting the moment when all would shift, the woman's eyes would open, Ra give a mighty crack to my spine, or Fas offer me something to drink out of his magician's hands. But, as the three bodies lay in the dirt side by side, nothing. I felt death crowding in closely, attentive, peaceful, oddly comforting.

I wept. Even the tears did not wash away the crease before me. Nor did the four fires I built, standing sentinel over the pyres that took my three travelers and the young me off to their places of rest. I had the strongest impulse to throw myself into the boy's pyre, but something - the woman's touch, her voice in my head - stilled me.

As I finally lay down to rest, the sun was just beginning to light the horizon in the east.

viii. Visitation

On each of the next four days, the girl lanced yet another of what she called my "eyes," and with each piercing, a new child would disappear. Of the band of angels, that is. The teeming hordes off in the distance seemed to draw closer and closer to us, though shimmering, as in a mirage. Silence during the day, though their voices seemed to fill my dreams. I hesitated to ask the girl where the angels had gone, for fear she would lay their disappearances on my head as well.

On the fifth day, I woke to find that feeling had returned to the left side of my body. I cried out in elation, but found that my voice was gone. The girl seemed unfazed by sudden resurrection, as if all was proceeding according to some calculus to which only she was privy. The remaining boy mounted one of the horses and she the other, handing me a tether to lead her on. The encasement we left behind. Late in the afternoon, the ocean appeared on the horizon, as the cry of gulls filled the air off in the distance.

"North," the girl announced, a terse command I was fain to resist. It seemed my journey, one I had envisioned ending at the ocean, was still not at an end. As the last light disappeared, she lit a lantern: instead of stopping for the night, we pushed on.

After two more hours traveling, a horse nickered in the dark. Out of the darkness, a one-eyed man stepped into our traveling light. A quick glance to the girl: she nodded, and he took me roughly by the arm, pushing me into the darkness.

We entered a coolness, as walls of stone closed in upon us. No light: the man, with his one eye, seemed to guide us on sheer familiarity: no need to see, no possibility of seeing. Our steps went downward for a very long time, echoing footsteps back on up the stone walls behind us.

An hour must have passed before we stopped, at which point I was pulled down and made to lie on my back in what felt like mud: the feeling was not unpleasant, almost comforting. Behind my head, I heard the scraping of wood against wood. Within moments, water slowly began to fill the space around me: salt water, by the smell of it. As it filled the space around me, its saltiness was confirmed: densely salted, as I floated on its surface, with no effort at all.

The voices of the mirage children seemed to fill the air around me, pressing so heavily upon me I felt as if I would suffocate. They rose to a horrifying crescendo, and then fell away into ghostly silence, as a rich orange light split the darkness. Defying all natural laws, two figures floated above me: twelve feet from me was the remaining boy, with a knife at his throat. Holding the knife was my father, a man I had presumed dead, since he disappeared over thirty years ago, in a hail of violence.

Glimmering in the mud to my right was another knife, twin to that in my father's hand.

"Make your move," said my father. His eyes upon me were serpent-like.

I lay in horror of the man, paralyzed by fear of him. Still.

"Pick it up." My father, again. Sick of my hesitation, he slid his blade inside the left nostril of the boy and quickly slit it open. The blood began to rain upon me.

A rage welled up and I picked up the knife. As I did so, I began to rise in the air.

A foot from my father, I lashed out, a quick slit to his brow. He laughed maniacally, as I found paralysis returning to the left side of my body.

The boy cried out, "Not him! Do not cut him! It only adds to his strength!"

"What would you have me do, foolish child?" I cried.

"I cannot tell you. All I can say is that, if you cut him, it will kill the both of us."

Blood continued to rain upon me, and my father seemed to grow as my strength diminished. In a flash, the girl's face exploded in my mind's eye, and with all the strength and determination left in me, I thrust the knife into yet another of the wounds on my arm. An avalanche of fire ripped through my body, ripped through the cave, and then -

Darkness fell.

vii. The Thousand Eyes

I traveled – I was traveled – by my ragtag band of angels for three more days, sluicing through their silent choreography. No feeling returned to my left side; my minions continued to strap me into my daily encasement, though they cut into the upper panel, allowing me to see the terrain we were traversing. On the second day, we dropped down out of the pine woodlands into flat scrubland, punctuated every few miles by skeletal trees affording us some shade from the raging inferno above us. I felt like a mere babe in the buzz of all the patient youthful activity around me, but no one seemed to begrudge me their labors. I recalled the oldest girl’s assurance that they were being well paid by Ra for their work, a statement I held with the greatest skepticism: I had never known Ra to pay for anything, much less well.

The morning of the fourth day, as the oldest girl set my simple breakfast before me, I said, “I see that you drink, but you do not eat.”

“I am fasting,” she replied. “For the others.”

I looked around at the younger children bent over their rough bowls.

“Not them,” she said, following my glance. “For the hundreds, the thousands –”

“Your village, yes. There were that -”

“Not them,” she said, with some vehemence. “Yours.”

“Mine. I beg your par -”

“Look around you, blind fool. For the thousands you have left strewn in the wake of your arrogance and oblivion.”

At first, I heard her words as madness, yet more madness on this insane journey, but then off to the east, rising back into the pine forests, I could have sworn that they teemed with limbs and hungry eyes. I felt a terrible desire to run, and yet, even if I were not strapped down, there was no way that my body could have moved. I felt trapped by yet another of Ra’s maniacal plots.

“Ra has nothing to do with this,” said the girl, belying her earlier denials of clairvoyance. “These are the thousands you have killed, my friend.”

I bristled at her accusation. “I have never carried a weapon my entire life,” I said.

“So many ways to kill us. You are truly one of the gifted.” She took my left hand and fingered the ring upon my it.

“This. What is this?”

A gold band, inlaid with the profile of a carnelian horse.

“A ring my father gave me.”

“And where is your father?”

“I do not know. He left me when I was but a very young boy – younger than the youngest boy here.”

“An early death,” she said. “You see how quickly they multiply. Look around you.”

“I hardly see how I can be held responsible -”

“I’m sure you would see it that way.”

“Why heap all this upon me?” I cried. “My body is wracked with pain, it is not my own. My left side is paralyzed, and as you can see, I am still covered with all these hideous wounds -”

“Yes. The eyes. Eyes to see all those you have killed.”

“Child -”

“I would not call me child. You do so at your peril.”

I knew not what to make of that statement. She who sat in front of me was a child. What else call her?

“You do not see, my friend. The problem is that you look with the two eyes in your head. No wonder you are blind. God has given you a thousand eyes upon your body, what you dismiss as affliction. See with your body, and you will be able, finally, to answer your questions.

“Questions? I have no -”

“Who are you?”

I was stunned to realize that I had no answer.

“And where, pray tell, are you from?”

Again, I had no answer: not for her or for myself.

She placed her palm upon one of the many sores on my left arm. With her forefinger, she pushed down firmly into the middle of the wound. I felt fire raging in the spot, and a flash of lightning in my head. In the midst of the flashing light, I saw the face of the boy who had shown me the map of our journey.

When I looked for him, he was no longer there.

vi. Into the West

I woke to the sounds of traveling. Darkness all around at first, but as my eyes acclimated to the movement and my surroundings, I could see broken light through slits in whatever it was that encased me. I found, to my initial horror, that I could not move my left hand at all. When I reached for it with my right hand, the dead hand felt extremely swollen. The ring on my middle finger bit deeply into the flesh around it.

I heard the piercing cry of a hawk off in the distance, but for the most part, there was silence around me, save for the movement of the contraption in which I lay. No voices; just the muffled breathing of the animal I assumed was pulling me. I surmised that I was pressed between two panels of flexibly latticed wood, further cushioned by pine branches and a thick blanket beneath me. The smell of baked pine filled the air; I had not known there were pine forests to be found in my slice of the world.

There was little feeling in my left leg as well. My foot felt very cramped and swollen, in a most painful position. After thirty minutes or so of traveling in my moving coffin, I cried out, near dying from heat and a pressing sense of claustrophobia. The movement stopped, and footsteps approached me, circling and untying what I saw to be leather thongs. The sun was low over the western horizon, but still merciless in the sky; I was quickly pulled into the shade of a tall pine tree.

I was surrounded by six children - three girls and three boys, all clad in faded blue. They looked directly at me, but spoke not a word, none of them. An older girl approached me and, cradling my head in her left arm, she poured water from a skin into my mouth. Warm and sulfurous, but nonetheless it quenched something deeper than thirst in me.

"Thank you," I whispered; there was no reply: no words, no nod.

It appeared that we had stopped our travels for the day. Two of the boys unpacked the two horses with which we were traveling. One of the girls began to build a fire, while the others lay out a blanket atop which they set a modest meal. Just as there were no words shared with me, there were indeed no words shared between themselves. Nods at best; most of the movements seemed long choreographed from their familiarity with each other.

My question, "Where are we?" passed completely unnoticed; not even a glance my way. Slow to catch on to my predicament, I persisted with the question "Where are we going?" before giving in to the silence. A rough bowl of bulghur and beans sprinkled with mint was set before me, along a cooler cup of water, without the sulfurous taste. There was no spoon; I made do with my right hand, as my left was useless.

I noticed that the oldest girl did not eat. She sat on the edge of our circle, gazing steadily at me.

After dinner, one of the young boys approached me with a rudimentary map. His right index finger traced a line from below what I took to be the Rif, westward to the ocean. At the bottom of the map was Ra's unmistakably chaotic script, warning me to stay with the children, no matter where they went: as if, in my condition, I had any choice. I briefly touched the boy's hand to thank him, and for some reason he was moved to speak - or try to. His lips parted to reveal a tongue that had been carved in half. I wondered if the other members of my silent chorus had all suffered a similar fate.

"Not all," said the oldest girl, the one who had abstained from eating to gaze at me through my meal.

"You hear people's thoughts, do you?" I said.

"I see. Nothing more. Pay attention in this daily silence and you see many things. Things you often do not want to see."

"Like me, perhaps."

"I pay you no mind, sir. That is to say, you do not bother me. Ra is paying us handsomely for your transport."

"These are your brothers and sisters?"

"They are now. Our village was slaughtered three years ago. We were the lucky ones to get out."

"Not all so lucky, it would appear."

"The price of a tongue or a finger -" she raised the four fingers of her right hand - "is dirt cheap compared to the price paid by our mothers and fathers."

"I'm sorry, I meant no -"

"There is no need to apologize. Living is dying for us. You travel with shades - nothing more."

After nightfall, I had no trouble believing the girl's words. It felt as if they all melted into the darkness around me, leaving me to my troubled dreams.

poem: beanpod dance moves

create your own world sez
marky z, a shaky proposition
that, i've schnizzed
the frontal lobes for just
the right egress this
ain't no simple dimes
we're countin, the vesper
queens have a way with you
they gonna badu
your bad ass all over
the governor's school, monmouth's
mighty cooty bag of
jelly bean metaphysics,
a presidential platter of
refried fussball, it ain't
in the midgetary brain waves,
the brian jones of poolside caviar,
i meant to ask
for the proper dinosaur
etiquette, i mean it did
cross my mind,
but that wallowing mist,
the beanpod saccharine
dance moves gave me
eventual pause:
you see the quandary:
we all live down
the dairy lanes,
we cast our visionary
piggie platters before
the gods of
voodoo seismographs, if
it ain't in the shutter,
cher, then it's
in
the shuttin up.

poem: play the rounds

platypus blues got you
rockin the casbah
empty dismal pepto
bismol days play
the rounds of fury
it's a kinder/gentler
bambino we're after here,
little franz, take your
Amerika all the way back
to bourbon bronx
oenophiles, regale yourselves
with all the psalms
at your disposal
cry a big rio
segue the rest
to the jonesy
midnights you reckoned
beyond your beck
this Faneuil hall
of cats in the early days
splendid Kansas City
barbecue, miles dithering
the holy cherokee out
of bird, two havens
for the smiley twins
of inactivity, jil sings
down the rest in
her radiant chorus,
it ain't the after she's
after, she wants it now,
the fistful of dollars
ain't for the takin, she
gathers the rest
down the bosom highway,
gallivanting little
heifers all in they
vigorous
Big Bib city
clairvoyant
rubdown.

poem: whispers here

the imam fainted &
the english teacher right
alongside, it ain't often
the rest of you integrates
the last of your coffee grounds
tumbling futures
orange and blue,
sifting through the images
of damned if you don't
& you better:
the liveliest of livelies
in the Carolinas
never withered with such
fury, sampling the better
days, severing ties
with all they jerry garcia
splotches, wine has
a better way of saying
no when you rack
the eight-ball in the center
you hear all
the lasting variations
all the exponential
eggplant growth
on the distaff
side, and as you're rounding
third for home
the whispers:
here is your nowhere
here is your noun
here is the radiance of
your thistly
crown.

poem: unsaid careening

i went backward in the backwards
store, ascending the spiral
fates, elegant wasteland
of the forty times traveled
past the details left unsaid,
careening by brute force
the simpering fools
lingering in the heart,
lounge lizards on grey rock
salivating the futures
the golden opportunities
gooed in the gooiest of honeys
all your little honeybees
back in the woods
clamoring for a daytime
spot.

poem: syllables ooze

veiled threats
skimming the pot
saturnine equestrians
ogling the sweetish hills
backyard frenzy round
the riotous bibs,
caterwauling misses
in the fields
of plenty, i wish I may
& all the variant nonsense
Ventures hit lists
in the green gra-doo
of tangible dividends:
the eventual run-off
guarantees results
at ten & all the rest,
obliging winners to vary
the digitals until wipe-out
relearns its memory
code, & the blue syllables
ooze southward, disturbing
peace & plenty,
shaping nasal opinions
while the vagrant
avalanche saturates beyond
all hope of
savage beauty,
riparian waste.

poem: turquoise of the last

chester's chicken to go
mimsies your soul
with writhing tributaries
the acquisescent iridescence
of last calls
the vigilant renegades
coursing the soul's
guava jones, as if
she mystifies on the order
of dark meat and righteous
lemon lime: I ask you:
was there ever such
sublime guidance 'cross
the rockies, frolicking
wildebeests tumbling
the SATs of vigourous
stimuli, angel food lab
partners left behind
the parking lots
the Heidelbergs,
eleventh floor
vagaries,I seem to recall
you were the first
simply shaded by reputation
your kiss was free fall
down the wiliest of ways
passionfruit
amassed as time passed
turtle bays most
complete
surprising calm
in the after
inured by time's
dither, ask beyond the fall
of men, the rise of
doors blessed
by singleminded
caution, and the vespers
whisper, calling
eyes forgotten
limbs bewitched
wings
in the turquoise
of the last
mercurial
exponential
nonessential
round.

poem: you do answer

get your big bib on
down to Big Bib's Bar-B-Q
fusticate your druthers
in the drip dry honey
trees, fishy sauce
that ego on up the traces
a simple quandary bears
fruity fruit only when
the casual gambler
arrays self to gnome &
gnome to the past tense
the oliebollen of revelry
will paste your gluten
free pasta jones
to the cheechy maritimes.
henry morgan down the royal
way, his bib no bigger
than Big Bibby's &
Mr Tim's broadcast
liver & onions on
the presa way, it's cruelty
in a cruel-free zone
the armpits of renewal
congeal around
the obsessions of
foster-gruel,
whatever you do
answer all your doors in
all your bibs
the big show is callin'
she be the ever
you never
had the predilections for
grooving, anthem girl
in the back seat,
a sublime misgiving
the very giving
in the drawing rooms
the plastic forties
seraphim of equal splendor
your hindenberg's in the closet
foaming up the left-over
yous, feeling the rest
of the puzzle,
nuzzling the monty doors
& all they goats.